AN APPRECIATION: Henri Rousseau Self-portrait.
Post- Impressionist Henri Rousseau's goal was to create traditional academic art. However, he was never able to master the necessary techniques and so his works were done in a naïve, child-like style. Scorned by the critics of the day, Rousseau nonetheless continued with his art. Today, his imaginative works are widely popular due to their straightforward charm.
Rousseau was born May 21,1844 in Laval, France. His family was middle class, his father was a metalsmith. However, the family had financial difficulties that led to the seizure of their home. Inasmuch as the family had to depart the town, Henri continued on at the high school as a boarding student. He was an average student but was awarded prizes for art and music. In 1860, Rousseau left school and went to work. His employer accused him of theft and so Rousseau joined the army in order to avoid scandal and punishment. A soldier in the 51st Infantry Regiment, Rousseau never saw combat and never left France. However, he was captivated by his comrades' tales of the time they served in the jungles of Mexico. Rousseau left the army in 1868, narrowly missing the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. After his father's death, he moved to Paris where he obtained a government job checking goods coming into Paris for the toll authority. His job was not very demanding and Rousseau spent time exploring the museums of Paris. By 1884, he had began to paint and even obtained a license to copy paintings in the Louvre. Rousseau had no formal art training. Most of what he learned came from copying paintings in the Louvre. This was a practice that sharpened the talents of many contemporary artists including Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, Paul Cezanne, Pierre Auguste-Renoir and Henri Fantin-Latour. However, without a foundation in such things as the rules of perspective, anatomy and composition, Rousseau was unable to crack the secrets of the Old Masters. Consequently, his paintings were simple and child-like. Nonetheless, Rousseau had faith in his art. His ambition was to join the ranks of the conservative artists who dominated France's leading art school, the Ecole des Beaux Arts. However, the works that he submitted for the academy's prestigious annual art exhibition, the Paris Salon, were all rejected. By this time, showing at the Paris Salon was no longer the only way to achieve success as an artists. Following in the wake of the Impressionists, other avant garde artists were banding together to stage exhibitions. One such group was the Societe des Artistes Independants, whose members included Paul Signac and Georges Seurat. Even though Rosseau aspired to be an academic artist, he decided to exhibit some of his works with the Societe des Independants. Their exhibitions were open to all and there was no jury. As a result, Rousseau's paintings were exhibited along with those of some of the leading avant garde artists of that era. Rousseau would continue to contribute to this group's exhibitions every year until his death. Because these exhibitions presented cutting-edge art, they attracted both the public and the critics. Rousseau's paintings were noticed by the critics and savagely attacked. They were also noticed by other artists. Paul Signac and Camille Pissarro liked the open emotion of Rousseau's paintings. Despite the ridicule of the critics, Rousseau decided to retire early from his government job in 1893. His wife had died in 1888 and only one of their seven children lived to adulthood so Rousseau had little in the way of family obligations Therefore, he could dedicate himself to painting full-time. Rousseau never made much money from his art. Therefore, he also performed odd jobs including being a street musician and producing some covers for Le Petit Journal. However, despite his modest means, he was able to marry again in 1898. His allegorical painting “War of the Ride of Discord” received a good review when it was exhibited at the 1894 Salon des Independants. This work also attracted the attention of Alfred Jarry, the flamboyant writer and artist. Jarry was particularly interested in the absurd and in challenging the rules of society with satire. Rousseau's high aspirations and his unsophisticated art were just the sort of thing that appealed to Jarry. Taking Rousseau, who Jarry nicknamed “Le Dauanier” (the customs collector), under his wing, Jarry introduced Rousseau to the avant garde thinkers, writers and artists of Paris. Artists such as Pablo Picasso and George Braque, saw Rousseau's straightforward simplicity as akin to the works of “primitive” African and Polynesian artists that were starting to become popular in Paris at the time. This was art unconstrained and uncorrupted by the rules of western civilization. Although Rousseau was the darling of the avant garde, he was not one of them. He was a bourgeois with establishment aspirations, a figure of amusement to many of the avant garde. Indeed, a tongue-in-cheek banquet to honor Rosseau was staged in Picasso's studio with Rousseau placed upon a make-shift throne. Along the same lines, Jarry destroyed the portrait that Rousseau did of him just for the experience of destroying his own image. In 1904, Rousseau returned to a theme that he had begun to explore a decade earlier - - jungle scenes. His “Surprise, Tiger in A Tropical Storm” had been so harshly attacked when he exhibited it at the Salon des Independants in 1891 that Rousseau abandoned his exploration of this topic. However, rethinking the episode and seeing that his jungle picture had brought him some notoriety, he returned to the theme with “The Hungry Lion Throws Itself On An Antelope.” It was well-received and Rousseau would go on to do some 25 jungle pictures. Rousseau's jungle pictures were the product of imagination rather than depictions of scenes he had observed. Rousseau never left France. The jungle scenes were based on his army comrades' stories, visits to the botanical gardens and trips to the zoo. In 1906, Rousseau met the art collector Wilhelm Unde who agreed to promote Rousseau's art. However, this effort had to be postponed when Rousseau was imprisoned for bank fraud in 1907. The next year, Unde staged a solo exhibition of Rousseau's works but it was unsuccessful. Rousseau sustained an injury to his leg in 1910 but ignored it, possibly because he was despondent over the rejection of his romantic overtures by a shop assistant. When he eventually did go to the hospital, the injury had become gangrenous. Rousseau died on September 2, 1910. See our profiles of these other Post Impressionists
Emile Bernard Paul Cezanne Paul Gauguin Henri Toulouse Lautrec Odlion Redon Henri Rousseau George Seurat Paul Signac Vincent Van Gogh |
Rousseau's best known works are his jungle pictures. Above: The first jungle picture he exhibited “Surprise, Tiger in A Tropical Storm.” Below: “The Hungry Lion Throws Itself On An Antelope,” which marked his return to this subject after a gap of more than a decade.
Rousseau also painted other subjects including landscapes (see e.g., Le Moulin" above) and genre pictures (see e.g., the Football Players below).
In one of his last works, "The Dream" (above), Rousseau painted a fantasy in which his former mistress is transported into a jungle on a sofa.
Above: The Sleeping Gypsy."
Below: "War of the Rider of Discord." 
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Artist appreciation - Henri Rousseau